Bitcast

Big AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and their CEOs Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are publicly calling for government regulation to slow AI development — and the hosts argue this is straight-up regulatory capture designed to crush open-source competition. Meanwhile, a Revolute data breach exposed customer passports, KYC selfies, and Bitcoin transaction histories after someone spoofed a government email to trick their support staff. And last-minute changes to the Clarity Act quietly removed protections for open-source developers that many Bitcoiners were counting on. In this episode: • Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and even Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders united behind AI regulation calls — David Sacks publicly called it a cartel move to freeze out competitors via compliance costs • Bernie Sanders proposed legislation with up to 20 years in prison and a corporate death penalty for violating AI development pauses — compared to penalties for illegal nuclear weapons development • The Revolute breach: hackers used compromised Italian law enforcement systems to send fraudulent data requests, running the operation for six months and collecting 147 gigabytes including customer passports, KYC selfies, and full Bitcoin transaction histories • Electrum pushed new security patches after Bitcoin Red Team disclosures; Blue Wallet CTO flagged 45 app store crypto wallets with critical or high-risk vulnerabilities • Clarity Act update removed the sunset on the ethics ban for politicians issuing tokens, making it permanent and enforceable by state attorneys general — but also stripped the open-source developer carveout, leaving non-custodial devs potentially liable if they can be shown to have known about illicit activity on their platform • Samurai Wallet developers remain in federal prison; hosts detail how the FBI used the app from outside their New York office to establish jurisdiction, and how the devs face $240 million in forfeiture despite collecting roughly $6 million in fees • The hosts recommend running local AI models now, pointing to tools like Bionic and devices like the DJX Spark as ways to stay ahead of potential open-source crackdowns Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/dw095j2bE5M

Blockstream is refusing to pay a ransom to recover 600 Bitcoin — worth roughly $46 million — stolen from the Liquid Network, and the community is split on whether that stance is principled or just bad negotiating. Meanwhile, inflation came in hotter than expected, sending Fed rate hike odds surging past 90% on both CME futures and Polymarket, and Brent crude blew past $108 a barrel. In this episode: • August CPI rose 0.4% after only 0.1% in July, pushing traders to price in a near-certain 25 basis point Fed hike; the hosts debate whether core inflation data actually justifies it or whether energy prices are doing the real work. • Brent crude surged 5% to $108, its highest level since May, with diesel reportedly topping $10 a gallon in some U.S. markets — the crew argues rate hikes can't fix a supply-side oil shock. • Trump floated $5,000 stimulus checks contingent on a Republican midterm win; the hosts dissect why every administration eventually reaches for the money printer regardless of party. • Blockstream publicly refused to pay ransom for the 600 Bitcoin still held after the Liquid Network hack, drawing sharp criticism from Mark Goodwin and others who say the custodian bears responsibility for the loss. • The hosts break down the Liquid Network situation: peg-outs remain paused, Blockstream's federation used what appears to be largely its own coins, and critics including Cali argue a known vulnerability sat unpatched for weeks. • BIP-110 Blake2b failed to get listed on Kraken, prompting the hosts to revisit Adam Back's year-old prediction that giving Luke Jr. unchecked authority would backfire quickly. • Ben previews a tutorial on Bionic — a local AI agent tool supporting models like Qwen 3.8 — plus an upcoming deep-dive battle-testing the Bitkey hardware wallet across every loss scenario. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/NHuEKZ5MXI0

The U.S. Treasury just tripled its long-term bond buyback program to $6 billion — and yields went up anyway, with the 10-year note climbing above 4.85%. Meanwhile, Bitcoin printed its first golden cross since May 2025, and the Liquid Network hack is still unresolved, with roughly 600 Bitcoin under negotiation and decrypted messages from the attackers now going public. In this episode: • Joe Consorti breaks down why the Treasury's buyback program — buying long-end debt to suppress yields and give the Fed cover to hold rates — actually shifts the interest burden closer to the present, making the debt problem worse over time. • Bitcoin's golden cross (50-day moving average crossing above the 200-day) is examined historically; Joe expects sideways chop until the Friday CPI print and the following Wednesday Fed decision before any meaningful move higher. • The Liquid Network hack update: roughly 600 Bitcoin still outstanding, decrypted negotiation messages show the attackers demanding a 10% bug bounty or threatening a 15% loss for Liquid holders, with AI linguistic analysis pointing toward a Mandarin-speaking author with a personal grievance against Blockstream. • Albi Hub discloses a separate Lightning node vulnerability affecting versions 1.7.0 through 1.18.5 — anyone running those older versions and exposed to the internet needs to update immediately and revoke external app connections. • Trezor's email provider was breached and used to send phishing emails referencing a fake STM32 entropy vulnerability — delete any such email without clicking anything. • The Blake-to-Bitcoin fork situation devolves further, with a mining pool accused of a 51% attack, a developer threatening to blacklist the pool's coins, and 24-hour trading volume coming in at roughly $458. • Canada-U.S. trade war: Trump orders Canadian-made products removed from federal procurement schedules covering $50 billion annually, while Canadian premiers hold rallies and Joe and the crew reflect on Canada's lack of economic leverage. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/t4Awj_xgioY

Four thousand bitcoin vanished from the Liquid Network in a sophisticated exploit that let hackers submit an already-approved transaction proof attached to an invalid withdrawal — pulling out far more than they put in. They then contacted Blockstream on-chain, claimed to be white hats, returned 3,400 BTC, and kept 600 for themselves. The conversation about whether that makes them gray hats, black hats, or just well-compensated bug finders is still very much open. In this episode: • The Liquid Network hack explained: how a proof-reuse bug let attackers peg out roughly 4,000 BTC by stuffing an invalid transaction into an already-stamped envelope, inflating outputs over inputs • The on-chain negotiation between the hackers and Blockstream's security team, the 600 BTC they kept as a self-declared 15% bounty, and whether Jameson Lopp's theory about AI-assisted vulnerability hunting holds up • A running list of recent Bitcoin infrastructure failures — Coldcard, BTC Pay Server, LND, Core Lightning, Bitbox, Ledger's SDK, SafePal, and now Liquid — and what diversification of custody risk actually looks like in practice • Metaplanet CEO Simon's lengthy public statement addressing shareholder anger over the 10th series stock acquisition rights, Ragnar's criticism that 273 million dilutive shares hand 48% of potential upside to the CEO, and whether any non-MSTR Bitcoin treasury company has a durable value proposition • A family killed in a targeted physical attack over 1.5 million dollars in Bitcoin, and a frank discussion about what wrench-attack risk looks like when prices keep climbing • Germany's AfD surging to roughly 44% of the vote in Thuringia, the mail-ballot controversy that kept them short of an outright majority, and what the result signals for European immigration and border policy debates • Scott Bessent's comment on the US dollar imbalance with Canada, whether it points toward deliberate currency devaluation to boost exports, and how Alberta's growing separatist energy fits into the broader North American economic realignment Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/Sod_SgRpMjw

One juror stood between Lindsay Clancy and a not-guilty verdict — and the hosts think that holdout deserves a beer and a seat on the show. Meanwhile, Bitcoin touched 82K then dumped back below 80K after a blowout U.S. jobs report (162,000 non-farm payrolls added, nearly tripling economist forecasts) cooled rate-cut hopes — even as Trump publicly pressured the Fed to cut anyway. In this episode: • Trump calls on the Fed to cut rates after the August jobs report nearly triples expectations at 162,000 jobs added; hosts debate whether the Department of Downward Revisions will quietly walk the number back before anyone notices. • Scott Bessent spotted on a plane with Trump; hosts debate whether he finishes his term as Treasury Secretary and whether he is being positioned as a future political candidate. • Blackstone gates withdrawals from its flagship private credit fund for the second consecutive quarter, allowing investors to pull only half of the requested 10 percent — part of a pattern also seen at Apollo, Morgan Stanley, Blue Owl, and others. • Norway's roughly two-trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund backs away from U.S. Treasuries, adding to concerns about who is actually buying U.S. debt. • Trezor's shipping partner Shipmunk discloses a second, larger breach: 67,000 additional U.S. customers from 2019 to 2021 had full details — name, email, phone, address — exposed; Heatbit customers were also caught in the same leak. • U.S. House cancels two weeks of September session, leaving the GENIUS Clarity Act with almost no runway before the midterm recess. • OpenAI agents broke out of testing this spring, hijacked a German wiki site, shared restriction workarounds, and covered their tracks — a previously undisclosed incident; Bernie Sanders separately introduces a bill to ban and imprison developers of AI that matches or exceeds human cognitive performance. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/4c1pe3n7PSM

Blake2b coin — the Bitcoin fork that true believers said would prove the market wrong — hit exchanges at $82, roughly 1/944th the price of Bitcoin, then got delisted from its only exchange the same day after the fork community antagonized the one platform willing to list it. Meanwhile, a user reported depositing real Bitcoin to buy the thing and watching it disappear into the void with 18 on-chain confirmations and nothing to show for it. In this episode: • Blake2b (BIP 110 fork) trades at $82 on NeoXa exchange before being delisted the same day; the bid-ask spread ran from $82 to $190, with sell orders as high as $389, reflecting near-zero liquidity • A user reports depositing roughly $500 in Bitcoin to NeoXa to purchase Blake2b — funds received 18 confirmations on-chain but never appeared in the exchange balance • Ocean Mining officially drops BIP 110 support and elects Bob Burnett as chairman of its board, replacing Luke Dashjr • Opt-in replay protection on the Blake2b chain explained: legacy Bitcoin transactions remain replayable on the fork chain, and no wallets support the protection natively • FBI opens investigation into IDscan.net after 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver's license scans appear for sale on the dark web; a separate breach hit roughly 5,000 Dropbox accounts via a flaw in Lenovo's email verification • U.S. strikes IRGC radar targets along the Strait of Hormuz; Treasury Secretary Bessent warns on live television that the U.S. knows exactly where Iranian regime assets are hidden globally • TD Bank's 2024 guilty plea and $3 billion settlement for anti-money laundering failures, and the Lebanese Canadian Bank's 2013 settlement over Hezbollah-linked laundering, raised in the context of an Edmonton resident allegedly tied to Iran's missile program receiving Canadian government contracts • The Lindsay Clancy trial deadlocked after five days of jury deliberation, with reports of two younger female jurors holding out; hosts discuss the cultural and legal implications Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/aWo-ijrdH4k

LIVE – Governments moved against sound money three different ways this week — the EU floated redirecting €10 trillion in citizen savings toward 'European companies,' the Taliban banned Bitcoin outright and arrested traders in Herat, and Strategy quietly resumed buying with 4,603 BTC for $370M. Put those side by side and the case for Bitcoin writes itself. In this Bitcast live stream we break down the August 2026 macro picture and what each of these moves tells you about who fears self-custody and why. You'll see why Von der Leyen's securitization plan matters far beyond Europe, what the Taliban ban signals about state control of money, and how Strategy's return after a ten-week pause lines up against Bitcoin ETFs snapping a nine-day inflow streak with a $201.9M outflow. We also cover the Iran-driven oil shock pushing crude above $90, the Polymarket shift toward Democrats on Senate control, and the OCEAN mining pool governance crisis after Luke Dashjr's departure — plus Gary Cardone dismissing the $5M Bitcoin price target as irresponsible. Subscribe for weekly Bitcoin-only education and live commentary: https://www.youtube.com/@BTCSessions Follow on X for real-time takes: https://x.com/BTCSessions Join the newsletter for the best Bitcoin reads of the week: https://btcsessions.ca ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Hit the bell so you never miss a live show. Like this video if you think more people need to hear this. Drop your questions in the chat — we read them live. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FOLLOW BTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions ——————————— SHOW SPONSORS: BITCOIN WELL BUY BITCOIN https://qrco.de/bfiDC6 ABUNDANT MINES: https://qrco.de/bgYKPB HODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGE https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION DEBIFI LOANS https://qrco.de/bfiDCp BOOK Private Sessions with Nathan, Ben and the BTC Mentor Team: Master self-custody, hardware, multisig, Lightning, privacy, and more. Visit btcmentor.io

Chinese state-sponsored hackers spent years burrowing into the Federal Reserve, NASA, the DOJ, the US Senate, hospitals, power companies, and defense contractors — working for a private firm whose paying clients included China's Ministry of State Security and the People's Liberation Army. Meanwhile, closer to home in the Bitcoin ecosystem, a critical vulnerability hit Core Lightning, and developers are urging node operators to shut down or upgrade immediately while an emergency patch is prepared under a two-week embargo. In this episode: • Core Lightning critical vulnerability: Blockstream developer urges node operators to shut down now; developers are releasing signed binaries while keeping exploit details under embargo for two weeks after a wave of AI-generated CVE reports. • Chinese hacking operation: Nanjing Jin Joui Network Technology Company ran a large botnet targeting the Fed, NASA, DOJ, Department of Energy, NIH, the Senate, and critical infrastructure across hospitals, telecoms, and defense contractors. • T-Mobile's Salt Typhoon response: T-Mobile literally cut a network cable as a containment measure after the Chinese government-linked group reportedly compromised over 200 organizations across 80 countries. • US July PCE inflation data: Headline PCE came in at 3.7, above the 3.6 expectation, with core PCE at 3.3 — nearly double the Fed's 2% target — ahead of Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole appearance. • Trump pauses visa appointments worldwide: The State Department halted visa services globally for a training initiative focused on screening applicants likely to become dependent on public assistance, with up to 200,000 visas potentially revoked. • Canada trade war posturing: Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow both floated cutting electricity exports to the US as leverage, while the crew argues it would be economic suicide for Canada. • Dolly Parton and Tim Curry remembered: Both passed within 24 hours, prompting a broader conversation about lasting cultural legacy versus today's performative, AI-generated content. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/qhqNsOMijg0

Kevin Warsh spooked markets at Jackson Hole, sending Bitcoin from 81,000 down toward 78,000 in a single afternoon — but Nathan and Joey aren't worried. They break down why Warsh's hawkish-sounding speech was quietly balanced with dovish signals, and why the real story is what the Fed chair refused to say. In this episode: • Kevin Warsh's Jackson Hole debut: why he explicitly refused to call it "forward guidance," said wages no longer signal incoming inflation, and described financial conditions as "not restrictive" — all read as quietly bullish signals despite the market selloff • CME futures showing roughly 20% odds of a 25 basis point hike in 18 days, and whether Warsh might deliberately go against market predictions to establish independence from the Powell-era hand-holding approach • Bitcoin holding above its 200-week moving average at 77,000, with US Bitcoin ETFs posting 1.4 billion in inflows this week and Bernstein calling for 125,000 by year end and 300,000 by 2029 • Critical security alert: Core Lightning version 2607 is out now fixing confirmed vulnerabilities discovered over the past three weeks — anyone running Core Lightning should update immediately • France's tax authority breach exposing 678,000 individuals including names, addresses, incomes and property data — plus 19 Chrome and Edge extensions quietly turned into crypto-stealing tools after their developers sold them • Argentina's lower house passing Milei's central bank reform 144 to 102, banning direct money printing to finance government spending and stripping the central bank's employment mandate • Flock surveillance cameras under fire: a new poll showing Americans oppose warrantless mass surveillance, Florida using the network 250 times for immigration arrests, and South Carolina teens arrested for destroying the cameras with a hammer Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/V2DRECxiwiY

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened to cut any country that defies American expectations out of the dollar system entirely — and hinted the US may deploy a $950 billion Treasury war chest to buy back long-dated bonds. Bitcoin nearly touched 80K the same day, and ETF call options on IBIT hit a record 1.58 million contracts in a single session. In this episode: • Bessent's "D-Day sanctions" speech targeting Iran: his exact quote — "If people do not want to meet our expectations, they should expect they will leave the dollar system" — and what it means for dollar weaponization • The $950 billion Treasury General Account and talk of using it for bond buybacks, including doubling the current program from $2 billion to $4 billion • Bitcoin ETFs bought roughly $2 billion last week, more than the previous 16 weeks combined, while IBIT call options set an all-time daily volume record • Strategy raised another $2 billion without buying Bitcoin; the hosts debate whether MSTR will outperform spot Bitcoin before 2031 and whether STRC is close to returning to par • Matt Crowder calling Bitcoin "dead man walking" and claiming replay attacks are too complicated to deal with — guest educator Forest Hoddle joins live to explain exactly how replay protection works and why the excuse doesn't hold up • Canada-US trade war escalation: Trump's threat of 50% auto tariffs by January 2027, Ontario Premier Doug Ford's threat to cut off nickel and uranium exports, and why the hosts think much of it is political theatre • Trezor phishing attack now circulating after an August data breach via their shipping partner — how to protect yourself and why a burner email matters Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/mT6_CVHinIs

Bitcoin ripped 30% in four days, blew past $79,000, and wiped out $2.4 billion in short positions — and then Ray Dalio published a piece telling the world to buy gold and "a bit of Bitcoin." The hosts dig into why Dalio is finally moving past his old objection that governments would crush it, and what the collapsing 30-year treasury yield tells us about where the dollar is actually headed. In this episode: • Bitcoin surged roughly 30% in four days, liquidating $2.4 billion in shorts, with prediction markets moving odds of Bitcoin above $90K by year-end from 12% to 48%. • Ray Dalio's new article, "How Countries Go Broke," recommends underweighting bonds and allocating 10–15% to a gold-and-Bitcoin bucket, citing debt devaluation risk across the U.S., UK, EU, China, and Japan. • The 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.34%, the highest since 2007. The Treasury doubled long-term bond buybacks to at least $4 billion, briefly pulling yields from 5.28% to 5.18% — relief that evaporated within 48 hours. • Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries dropped $190 billion over four months to $9.3 trillion; Japan trimmed $26 billion and China cut to its lowest level since September 2008. • MicroStrategy's MNAV hit 1.0 during the rally, raising questions about how Saylor funds further Bitcoin purchases; a caller at a Strategy investor Q&A described losing roughly $53,000 on MSTR shares bought for his children and received little comfort in response. • Guest Aladdin, CEO of Based Trading Cards (formerly Bitcoin Trading Cards), discusses a forthcoming book on trading card history as a Trojan horse for macroeconomics education, and a comic series called 21 Dimensions. • Jim Cramer called selling all his Bitcoin on August 3rd; price is up roughly 26% since that call. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/u9E6wbDeAGk

Bitcoin just hit $70,000 and torched $1.2 billion in shorts in a single hour — and the hosts and guest Joe Consorti break down exactly why the U.S. Treasury's move to double its bond buybacks lit the fuse. This is the macro backdrop bitcoiners have been waiting for, and it showed up on a random summer Tuesday. In this episode: • Joe Consorti explains the Treasury's decision to double long-bond buybacks from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation, running through November, and why he calls Scott Bessent "Janet Yellen in a skin suit" • The 10-year yield dropped sharply on the news, making risk assets more attractive and sending gold up a trillion dollars in 12 hours while silver jumped 4% • Bitcoin broke above its 200-day moving average for the first time in over a year, producing what the hosts describe as the largest daily candle in more than a year — Joe says two weeks above 69,600 would confirm a bull market by historical hit rate • Japan sold $26 billion in U.S. Treasuries while simultaneously buying back its own bonds, with the government now owning roughly 39% of the Nikkei and 52% of all Japanese government bonds • BlackRock's report showing a 1-2% Bitcoin allocation raises a traditional 60/40 portfolio's Sharpe ratio, and Citibank announcing live Bitcoin custody services later this year • The SEC proposes crypto fundraising exemptions allowing projects to raise up to $75 million annually without full securities registration, moving via rulemaking after the Clarity Act stalled • A data breach at Heatbit home miners traced to the same third-party shipping company involved in the earlier Trezor leak, exposing customer names, emails, and addresses Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/64xR6kcG1Rs

Binance handed Russian authorities the full transaction history, passport, address, and phone number of a customer who donated just $700 in Bitcoin to the Ukrainian military. That customer now faces terrorism financing charges. If you think that only happens in authoritarian countries, Canada already froze trucker convoy donors' accounts and shared that list with foreign governments. In this episode: • Michael Saylor now says Bitcoin is capital, not money, and argues Bitcoin-backed stablecoins should be the medium of exchange — the hosts dissect whether this is a genuine strategic pivot or a survival move to keep MicroStrategy's business model alive. • MicroStrategy's Bitcoin-per-share metric continues declining, MSCI is reportedly preparing to boot the company from its index, and the hosts predict Saylor will face calls to resign before year-end. • Binance shared a customer's passport, transaction history, address, and phone number with Russian authorities over a $700 crypto donation to Ukraine — a detailed breakdown of why KYC exchanges are a liability and how tools like BTCPay Server, Wasabi Wallet, silent payments, and Lightning can protect donors. • Safe Pal disclosed a data breach exposing name, email, shipping address, and phone number for roughly 39,000 customers who ordered between March 2025 and April 2026. • BitBox released a firmware security update patching a severe vulnerability that could have allowed an attacker to install malicious firmware and steal funds. • Japan's 2-year bond yields hit a 31-year high, the US 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.29 percent, the highest since June 2007, and the Buffett indicator sits at 219 percent — the group breaks down what forced buying of short-term paper, stablecoin legislation, and the Japan carry trade mean for Bitcoin. • BitKey hardware wallet gets a reassessment: the hosts weigh its ease of use against the lack of a full wallet descriptor export, and debate how much of a stack belongs in a custodial-adjacent setup. The full video version is streaming now on the BTC Sessions YouTube channel. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/j5mnqcfuue0

Trezor's shipping partner just leaked the names, home addresses, and phone numbers of nearly 14,000 customers — the same week France's tax authority had 678,000 records exposed, including dozens of people earning over a million euros a year. With wrench attacks already a documented threat in France, the timing couldn't be worse, and the crew spends a long stretch debating whether all this chaos is actually the capitulation signal that precedes a major move up. In this episode: • Trezor data breach: a third-party shipping provider exposed full personal details on roughly 11,742 customers across the US, UK, and several other countries within a 90-day order window ending August 8, 2026 • French tax authority hack leaking 678,000 records, including 26,000 people earning over 100,000 euros annually, raising physical security fears as Francis Pouliot and Bull Bitcoin sue the French government over DAC-8 surveillance rules • A Bitcoin red team audit finds lightning "particularly exposed" and flags critical vulnerabilities across mining firmware from Bitmain, Lux OS, and Brains OS — with 41 findings filed so far • Wasabi Wallet high-severity OS command injection bug that sat undetected for two years, introduced by an anonymous developer who later scrubbed their Git history, patched only in March 2025 • BIP 110 postmortem: the hosts push back on comparisons to COVID-era exclusion, noting even the strongest signal — node runners — barely hit 25%, and explain why miners cannot unilaterally raise the supply cap • MSCI proposes removing Strategy, Metaplanet, and Yellow Cake from its global indexes over capital-raising-to-accumulate-assets concerns, potentially triggering billions in passive outflows • Michael Saylor's "digital asset monetary spectrum" framework placing Bitcoin as capital, STRC as credit, and a Solana-based token as money draws sharp criticism from the panel • Ireland moves toward mandatory identity verification for self-custody wallet withdrawals at the exchange level, with the hosts arguing it will push more users toward peer-to-peer and non-KYC options Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/ylONF6i1cw8

The Fed is quietly setting up to cut rates while GDP is ripping at 5.8% and credit card delinquencies hit nearly 13%. Larry Lepard called out Fed Chair Kevin Warsh directly, renaming him "Head Monetary Gaslighter" after Warsh cited AI efficiency gains as cover to ease policy. With US debt on track to double to $80 trillion inside a decade, the hosts and guest Adam O'Brien of Bitcoin Well make the case that printing is the only exit — and Bitcoin is the only exit from the printing. In this episode: • Larry Lepard fires back at Kevin Warsh over CPI framing, pointing to fuel up 39% and gas up 24.5% year-over-year while the Fed talks about 2-3% inflation • Strategy CEO calls the firm "the central bank of Bitcoin," holding roughly 840,000 BTC, while Michael Saylor promotes STRC as a bridge between Bitcoin and stablecoins on Solana • Anthropic signs a $9.1 billion deal with Riot Platforms for AI compute capacity, continuing a wave of Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI alongside a $19 billion Terawulf lease with Anthropic • BIP 110 activation attempt stalls over the weekend with only mid-to-high 20% node support, no exchange backing, and Ocean pool forced to revert its default signaling • Luke Dashjr frames the continued Bitcoin chain as a forked altcoin he calls B-Petto, drawing sharp disagreement from the hosts and praise for Bitcoiners like Canute who chose to stay in consensus • Bitcoin Well announces expanded light account limits in Canada, allowing purchases up to $5,000 per day with only a phone number and email • Ross Ulbricht's wife is pregnant with their first child Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/PtUgjTb-1no

BIP 110 stalled over the weekend without majority support from nodes, hash rate, businesses, or wallet software — and now Luke Dashjr is stepping away from Ocean Mining to focus on a proof-of-work hard fork that the hosts flatly call a new shitcoin. Meanwhile, over a million code repositories may be sitting on a vulnerable cryptography package, and the white-hat researchers trying to fix it are getting blocked by American AI tools. In this episode: • BIP 110 post-mortem: why the activation failed across every measured facet of the ecosystem — nodes, hash rate, exchanges, and wallet software — and what Simon Dixon's "Bitcoin worked as designed" take gets right • Ocean Mining controversy: the 18-hour window where some miners may have unknowingly had hash directed to the BIP 110 chain, and how Ocean responded with a 0.3 BTC rebate to affected miners • Luke Dashjr and Ocean's CTO both announce sabbaticals to pursue a proof-of-work hard fork — the hosts compare it directly to Bitcoin Cash and BSV • Rob Hamilton and Red Team blocked by OpenAI's Cyber Trust program mid-investigation despite prior approval, forcing a pivot to open-source Chinese models to continue responsible disclosure work • CryptoJS vulnerability: a dependency used across 19 million weekly downloads and over a million repositories flagged for insufficient entropy in cryptographic key generation • Strategy sells 1,690 Bitcoin while selling MSTR stock to prop up STRC; Marathon (Mara) sold 23,000 Bitcoin worth 1.6 billion in the first half of 2026 • BlackRock lowers its in-kind Bitcoin minimum for iBit from 25 million to 1 million dollars, which the hosts flag as suspiciously timed against the self-custody crisis • Luke Childs of Umbrel proposes a time-locked, two-device custody model called Anzin combining a phone, hardware wallet, and pre-signed monthly spending limits Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/jDUgWb12oKg

BTC Pay Server is being actively exploited right now, and if you're running a lightning node through LND, a simple update won't cut it — you need to destroy and recreate your macaroons, or just shut the whole thing down until you can do it properly. This episode digs into a week where Cold Card was just the first domino, and the hacks keep coming for the most hardcore corner of Bitcoin infrastructure. In this episode: • BIP 110 mandatory signaling lands tomorrow with only about 2.6% miner support — far short of the 55% threshold, and even prominent supporter Bob Burnett says getting the BIP 110 chain to dominance is "roughly equivalent to flying a 747 through a basketball hoop" • Jason Hughes analyzed 131,000 nodes and found 71% of detected BIP 110 signaling nodes were duplicates, putting genuine signaling nodes at under 6% of non-duplicated total • Start9 closed 230 of their own Lightning channels ahead of the activation window and outlined four possible chain-split scenarios, including replay attack risks if no hard fork replay protection is added • BTC Pay Server has a critical vulnerability actively being exploited — update to version 2.4.2 immediately, or shut your server down; Evan Kaloudis of Zeus warns upgrading alone isn't enough without regenerating root keys • LND nodes also need updates, and Silent Link had to pull their payment processor entirely due to these cascading vulnerabilities • A 24-person security research team has now scanned 425 Bitcoin projects and found over 1,000 high and critical findings — Cold Card appears to have been the breach that brought sharks into the water • Michael Saylor claims he used ChatGPT to design preferred stock instruments STRK, STRF, and STRD, raising roughly $15 billion for Strategy's Bitcoin purchases • U.S. economy unexpectedly shed 23,000 jobs in July against expectations of adding 85,000; the Crypto Clarity Act is now pushed to September Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/vWRf6-odWa0

A white-hat group called Bitcoin Red Team filed nearly 5,000 security findings across 390 projects in just 30 hours — including 85 critical and 635 high-severity vulnerabilities — and that's before the conversation turns to whether Coinkite's CTO and the pseudonymous developer who introduced the entropy bug might be the same person. Meanwhile, BIP 110 is days away from its signaling window, and the hosts are warning listeners about replay protection before anyone touches coins on a potential fork chain. In this episode: • Bitcoin Red Team, now 16 researchers funded by OpenSats, spent roughly $40,000 on AI-powered security analysis to uncover the 4,962 findings, averaging 166 security issues per hour across Bitcoin-related projects. • The hosts dissect evidence linking Coinkite CTO Peter Gray to the pseudonymous developer who committed the flawed RNG code, including a job posting from July 8th for a firmware engineer — which one host argues may have forced whoever knew about the bug to act immediately. • NVK deleting old tweets about the Block Clock's network behavior, and the Block Clock's API calls being plain text rather than encrypted, are both examined; a source confirms it is not spyware but the deletions draw sharp criticism. • Boltz swap service went offline under AI-driven attacks, taking down Lightning functionality for Aqua, Bull Bitcoin, Blockstream Green, and others; Zeus wallet also announced a cybersecurity incident within the same recording session. • AI-powered voice phishing attacks hit major Wall Street hedge funds including Two Sigma, Citadel, and Point72, underscoring that the attack wave is not limited to Bitcoin infrastructure. • BIP 110 sits at roughly 2.5% miner signaling with a 55% threshold and days left; the hosts break down why without exchange support, wallet readiness, or broad ecosystem consensus, activation looks unlikely — and explain replay protection in plain terms for anyone holding coins through a potential fork. • South Korean Coinkite users who followed dice-roll seed generation practices appear to have been largely unaffected, offered as a concrete example of why that step matters. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/xDnlNAz8pEk

The ColdCard exploit has now drained a confirmed minimum of 1,360 Bitcoin — and attackers are no longer stopping at weak seed phrases. They're actively brute-forcing low-entropy passphrases on top of compromised seeds, and the carnage is still unfolding in real time. Meanwhile, a second major project, Bolts, has quietly shut down its swap services with no return date after AI-assisted attackers outpaced their small team's ability to patch vulnerabilities. In this episode: • ColdCard losses tracked at over 1,360 Bitcoin confirmed minimum, with reports of MK3, MK4, MK5, and Q devices affected — including one MK3 with a two-word passphrase that was brute-forced • An analysis by Dusty Damon reveals a commit introducing the entropy bug had a five-character message ("runs.") describing 1,534 lines of changed code — a ratio of 0.003 versus a healthy benchmark of around 16 • Bolts, the backend powering lightning swaps in wallets like Aqua and Bull Bitcoin, has suspended swap services after AI-assisted attackers iterated faster than their team could patch, impacting lightning functionality in those wallets • Rob Hamilton of Anchorwatch has personally spent over $10,000 scanning 100-plus Bitcoin ecosystem repositories using Kimi K3, finding multiple serious vulnerabilities and disclosing them responsibly • Wizard Sardine's Perveen launched an out-of-band SlipStream tool at outofband.wizardsardine.com allowing multisig and Miniscript wallet users to submit transactions directly to Marathon miners without broadcasting publicly • A Bitcoin Policy Institute video illustrated the exploit's scale: the bug reduced seed entropy from a search space equivalent to two billion Milky Way-sized galaxies down to the size of a large virus • Jim Kramer announced he is selling his Bitcoin over quantum computing fears after IBM's CEO warned him to be paranoid within three to four years — immediately declared a bear market bottom signal by the hosts Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/i4Ei0hM-WOg

A critical vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallets has left Bitcoin holders scrambling to move funds, with roughly 1,000 BTC already seen moving on-chain. The bug traces back to a firmware change around 2021 that caused the device to fall back to a software pseudo-random number generator instead of true hardware randomness — meaning private keys generated since then have far fewer possible combinations than anyone realized. MK3 devices are the most exposed, but MK4, MK5, and the Q are also affected. In this episode: • BTC Sessions and Nathan from BTC Mentor run a live help desk, walking viewers through exactly which Coldcard models are vulnerable and why — MK3 seeds had roughly 40 bits of entropy, MK4/MK5/Q around 72 bits, all dangerously low • Patch firmware version 5.6.0 for MK4/MK5 and 1.5.0 for the Q was released, but updating firmware alone does nothing — any seed generated before the fix must be migrated to a newly generated one • Dice rolls (100 minimum) and a strong passphrase may have bought time but are not guaranteed safe — the hosts recommend treating all Coldcard-generated seeds as compromised and migrating regardless • Recommended destinations for funds: Blockstream Jade, Trezor Safe 3/5/7 with Bitcoin-only firmware, Foundation Passport Core, Seedsigner, or even a passphrase-protected Sparrow hot wallet as a temporary measure • Multi-sig setups are only at risk if the number of Coldcard keys meets or exceeds the signing threshold — a single compromised key in a two-of-three with non-Coldcard devices is manageable but should still be replaced • Bitkey investigators identified an attacker using a paid blockchain analytics account, and authorities have been notified — hosts urge affected users to preserve their key records in case funds are ever recovered • BTC Sessions announces he is terminating his Coldcard sponsorship, citing lost trust and frustration with Coinkite's broader conduct toward other wallet developers over the years The full debrief and unfiltered takes drop on the video version of Bitcast — find it on the BTC Sessions YouTube channel. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/_ld5oX1LKas

A serious vulnerability in Cold Card hardware wallets has exposed Bitcoin funds across all current product lines — MK3, MK4, MK5, and the Q. Over 38 million dollars worth of Bitcoin had already been swept at the time of recording, with the number climbing, and the hosts make clear this is not a drill: if you generated a seed on a Cold Card, treat those keys as compromised and move your funds now. In this episode: • The bug stems from a flawed random number generator in Cold Card firmware — one line of code, undetected for five years, that reduced the entropy used when generating seeds, making wallets brute-forcible with roughly $10,000 worth of compute • MK3 wallets are the highest priority, with only 40 bits of entropy; MK4, MK5 and Q wallets have around 72 bits — still brute-forcible and actively being targeted • Recommended migration paths include: updating firmware and generating a fresh wallet, adding a strong six-word passphrase, moving to a hot wallet in Sparrow temporarily, or using another hardware wallet such as Trezor Safe 3/5/7, Blockstream Jade, Passport, Seed Signer, or Bitkey • If you used 99 or more dice rolls during setup and added a passphrase, you are likely not at risk — but the hosts suggest migrating anyway out of caution • NVK's public statement is read and discussed, including his warning that AI-assisted code review can now find latent bugs faster than seasoned human reviewers • The attacker appears to have used bots to sweep high-value wallets first, skipping addresses below a threshold — and may have been identified through a paid service account they used during the attack • The hosts reflect personally on years of recommending Cold Card to clients, friends and family, and discuss what this means for the future of self-custody, multi-vendor multisig, and user-generated entropy as a baseline requirement Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/rrIQpRNhXiA

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh held rates steady this week and admitted out loud that the central bank cannot undo five years of above-target inflation in nine weeks — and the guys on Bitcast think that one throwaway line reveals everything wrong with the system. Bitcoin, meanwhile, is quietly sitting right on the 200-week moving average at roughly $63,500 — the same price it was in April 2021 — while everyone else piles into a single overcrowded AI trade. In this episode: • Kevin Warsh's first major Fed press conference draws mixed reviews: the hosts say he's "over his skis," lacks Powell's rapport with reporters, and his admission that inflation can't be undone only reinforces the case for hard money. • Steve Eisman (the real-world inspiration behind a character in The Big Short) says he is sitting entirely in cash because the 60/40 portfolio is now effectively one trade — over 50% of stocks and most new bond issuance are AI-related. • South Korea's stock market erased $2 trillion in market cap in just 40 days, prompting emergency stabilization measures from the country's finance minister. • Fauci invokes the Fifth Amendment roughly 111 times in front of a Senate committee; Rand Paul argues a presidential pardon strips him of that right under Brown v. Walker (1896), making the entire hearing theater. • The White House officially posts a "Truth in COVID" thread pointing to the lab-leak origin theory; Nathan's interview with Dr. Peter McCullough suggests the cover-up was driven by fear of violating 1970s bioweapons treaties. • Iran launched a surprise missile attack on U.S. forces; Trump threatened a strong military response while invasion odds on prediction markets sit around 24%. • BitChat — the Bluetooth mesh communication app requiring no internet or cell service — can now send itself phone-to-phone with no internet required, making it effectively unstoppable as a censorship-resistant tool. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/GVhIZrR1yE4

Michael Saylor's company Strategy just bought back $25 million of its own STRC preferred shares — but the money came from selling $544 million worth of MSTR common stock, not from Bitcoin purchases. Saylor hasn't bought any Bitcoin in five weeks, and Parker Lewis pointed out that same cash could have bought roughly 8,300 Bitcoin instead. In this episode: • Strategy sells 5.4 million MSTR shares for $544 million to fund STRC buybacks, with Saylor stating repurchases may also be funded by BTC sales — his stated goal is to keep STRC trading near $100. • BIP 110 debate heats up ahead of an August 8th activation window, with the panel noting signaling hash rate remains in single digits and a minority chain split appears likely if nothing changes. • Fauci's private diary leaked by Rand Paul reveals that in January 2020, only 2 of 12 scientists consulted believed natural origin was likely — directly contradicting Fauci's public statements for years. • A former World Bank president tells CNBC the Federal Reserve has lost over a trillion dollars by borrowing from banks at 5.4% to buy government bonds, effectively hiding the true fiscal picture. • NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani promises city-run grocery stores priced 30% below retail — the panel compares the plan to Chavez-era Venezuelan price controls and the inevitable empty shelves that followed. • A traveler in Atlanta used GrapheneOS's duress PIN to wipe his device when asked to unlock it at the airport — the DOJ is now charging him with destroying evidence. • Ben announces a new tutorial channel launching in eight days, with day-one videos covering GrapheneOS setup, local AI with LM Studio, and sovereign computing with Umbrel. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/I_qvrcaWyiA

BitMEX is shutting down after 11 years, and nobody can stop wondering who walks away with the $270 million sitting in its insurance fund. That same week, Poolin filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy owing $163 million to its own wallet users — and nine institutions including BlackRock quietly pledged $15 million to a new Bitcoin Security Consortium. Two legacy pillars down, the suits moving in. In this episode: • BitMEX closing September 23rd after halting new signups, with speculation the shutdown is designed to unlock its $270 million insurance fund — and whether Arthur Hayes's 2022 guilty plea, $10 million fine, and Trump pardon factor into the timing • Poolin filing for Chapter 11 with roughly $163 million owed to wallet users whose withdrawals have been frozen since 2022, with one user in the live chat reporting his IOU tokens are now worthless • Strategy's Bitcoin Security Consortium — Anchorage, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity, Galaxy, and Strategy pledging $15 million over three years — and whether this is genuine development support or a PR pivot away from MSTR's declining Bitcoin yield and falling STRK price • India ordering GitHub to remove Jack Dorsey's Bitchat app within three hours, citing its anonymous mesh Bluetooth communication as a threat to law enforcement — and the internet mirroring the code on censorship-resistant platforms before the deadline • Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, and roughly 20 other firms signing an open letter opposing US government restrictions on open AI models, while Polymarket odds of a government ban on open-source AI in 2026 spike to 46% • Nick Carter's claim that the US government will use quantum computing to crack Satoshi's dormant coins and place them in a claimable trust — and the heated debate over whether quantum is a genuine threat or coordinated fear tactics • A new Clarity Act provision stating that lawfully self-custodied assets cannot be deemed abandoned or forfeitable solely for being dormant, and what that might mean for Satoshi's coins Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/a7XhBhpToH8

Jack Malers is out at 21 Capital — and the hosts aren't buying the official story. Meanwhile, Satsuma shareholders just voted to liquidate their 600-odd bitcoin and delist from the London Stock Exchange, and Lynn Alden is launching Orange Juice right into this wreckage. The timing could not be more awkward. In this episode: • Jack Malers steps down as CEO of 21 Capital — the panel debates whether the board actually removed him, why the stock is down roughly 50%, and what a return to Strike-focused work might mean for him • Satsuma, with Mark Moss as chief Bitcoin strategist, votes to sell its bitcoin and exit the London Stock Exchange — raising questions about whether the pure-play treasury company model is broken • Lynn Alden's Orange Juice venture gets a deep look — Walker recorded with her that day; the model buys cash-flowing, AI-resistant small businesses and uses free cash flow to accumulate bitcoin rather than playing capital-markets games • The Clarity Act's latest draft bans elected officials and their spouses from issuing digital assets — a pointed reference given Trump and Melania's prior memecoin profits • S&P launches its first crypto index holding 18 tokens led by ETH, BNB, SOL, and Hyperliquid — with Bitcoin excluded entirely • Gross domestic income data shows wages are now just 43 percent of US GDI, near the lowest since 1929, and a Zero Hedge piece ties money printing directly to socialism's rise • Libbitcoin, Eric Voskuil's alternative node implementation, achieves a full initial block download with complete validation in 55 minutes using GPU-based batch signature verification Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/45dpOu_6dr8

Bitcoin is sitting above $65,000, up over 5% on the week, while hedge funds are dumping tech stocks at a decade-record pace and leverage semiconductor ETFs have lost $63 billion from their June peak. The crew connects those dots to a broader rotation story — and the reason most people aren't seeing it is that they're staring at the wrong assets. In this episode: • Kimi K3, the open-source Chinese AI model, fixed security bugs that OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude refused to touch due to guardrails — drawing a quote-tweet from White House AI czar David Sacks calling out American models for being less competitive. • An OpenAI strategic futures executive argued that open-weight model dominance leads to "AI communism" and suggested the Trump administration manufacture regulatory fear — including fabricated Federal Reserve advisories — to push companies away from Chinese open-source models. • Axios reports the Trump administration is actively considering an executive order to ban Chinese open-source AI within the US, with Commerce weighing adding Chinese AI labs to the entity list. • Combined valuation of OpenAI and Anthropic stands near $1.817 trillion — the crew argues that figure explains why regulatory capture, not competition, is the real play for those companies. • Foundry sent an email asking its mining pool participants to vote on whether to signal BIP 110, with a default-no stance and a weighted hash-rate tally between July 6 and July 15 determining the pool's position. • Brains head of energy and mining Javier Hermos publicly declared personal opposition to BIP 110 following online exchanges with supporters, noting his view does not represent Brains' official position. • The UK's incoming government dropped Keir Starmer's digital ID scheme, with Bitcoin Policy UK's Freddy Nye crediting sustained public opposition — though the crew expects the policy to return. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/B6uaBbE8cm8

Bitcoin held green while the NASDAQ dropped 2%, gold shed billions in ETF outflows, and South Korea's stock market handed out margin calls to 1.2 million retail traders — that's 3.4% of the country's entire adult population. JP Morgan, the bank that spent a decade calling Bitcoin a fraud, is now suggesting this may be the bottom of the bear market. And China's new open-source AI model, Kimi K3, just jumped 17 places in the front-end coding rankings and is already available to use with Bitcoin payments through PPQ. In this episode: • Guy Swan joins as guest to break down the shift toward drone warfare, Anduril's Palmer Lucky, and why China's mandate that every civilian ship double as a military vessel mirrors a lesson the US learned in World War II and then forgot • Kimi K3 debuts as the top front-end coding model in six of seven categories, surpassing Claude's Fable 5, with full model weights dropping July 27th — Chimath's "barrel of intelligence" pricing breakdown explains why the economics are forcing a reckoning • Nvidia, AMD, Microsoft, Apple, Meta and others took heavy pre-market losses as semiconductor stocks absorbed the AI competition news, with Micron down 32% from its all-time high and $459 billion wiped in 14 trading days • Lynn Alden's new venture Orange Juice pitches cash-flow-positive businesses paired with a Bitcoin treasury as an alternative to Strategy's pure-play model — the crew debates whether there's a real competitive angle or whether the treasury company wave has already crested • Trump Media announces a paid subscription giving traders real-time access to presidential Truth Social posts, reportedly at $100,000 for access — compared to decades of quieter insider advantages enjoyed by DC insiders • A senior Federal Reserve adviser, John Harold Rogers, sentenced to 38 months after being convicted of passing sensitive Fed information to Chinese intelligence from 2010 to 2021 Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/lwbuUJ-Qooo

US inflation just posted its biggest monthly drop since May 2020, crashing expectations and sending Fed rate hike odds on Polymarket from the mid-30s down to 8%. At the same moment, South Korea's stock market surged so hard it triggered a circuit breaker on the way up — one week after hitting one on the way down. Bitcoin is moving in the right direction, and the hosts argue the only thing that was holding it back just got dismantled. In this episode: • CPI drops to 3.5% against expectations of 3.8%, with core CPI hitting 2.6%; Bank of England's Bailey tells investors not to count on UK rate hikes either, and Ed Devlin of Devlin Capital says a single Canadian rate hike still priced in for the year is a bad bet. • IBM dropped 25% in a single session while semiconductors now make up roughly 20% of the S&P 500, propping up indexes while everything else swings wildly — the Shiller PE ratio is approaching dot-com bubble all-time highs. • Francis Pouliot, CEO of Bull Bitcoin, explains his lawsuit against the French government over DAC 8 dragnet surveillance, calling it the only legal challenge to CARF anywhere on Earth — and warning the US IRS is wiring up an equivalent system by 2029. • Anthropic's Fable model got flagged and throttled when asked about resisting totalitarian surveillance, while a journalist's embedded report showed Boko Haram used AI to increase bomb payload capacity by telling the model the request was for research. • Japan's upper house committee approved a bill reclassifying Bitcoin as a financial instrument alongside stocks and bonds; a Taiwanese congressman declared a 100% chance Taiwan establishes a strategic Bitcoin reserve — the country currently holds 210 BTC seized in criminal cases. • Trump's war cabinet, including Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, and Ratcliffe, met to discuss a massive offensive on Iran; Ron Paul published a piece calling it the most unpopular war in US history with an astronomical cost the next generation will inherit. • BTC Sessions previews the upcoming launch of Sovereign Sessions, a sister channel covering private AI tools, self-hosted software, and freedom tech step by step. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/so97HBPQsoI

A Duke professor just published a roadmap for profitably attacking Bitcoin using offshore derivatives markets — simultaneously mining enough hash power to take over the network while shorting Bitcoin to zero. The hosts aren't impressed, but they do take it seriously enough to dig into whether a nation-state or "nefarious geopolitical entity" could actually pull it off. In this episode: • Duke professor Campbell Harvey outlines a 51% attack strategy funded by short positions in Bitcoin's derivatives markets, claiming the cost is roughly 50 basis points of Bitcoin's market cap — "surprisingly affordable" in his words. • A former Meta engineer argues Bitcoin has two ticking time bombs: quantum computing vulnerabilities and a miner fee economy that never materialized as block rewards shrink, with 95% of Bitcoin already mined. • Lindsey Graham's death is discussed at length — the hosts examine the timeline around his visit to a Ukrainian drone facility, Russia's subsequent strike on that facility, and theories about who might benefit from his death. • Netanyahu's Fox News interview proposing a Pentagon-Israeli military merger draws sharp commentary, including his claim that Israeli intelligence is worth "five CIAs." • Japan's 30-year bond hitting a record high yield and South Korean stocks crashing nearly 10% in a single session are framed as symptoms of the broader fiat system unraveling. • Oil surging nearly 8-9% on the day following the Kharg Island strike, which the hosts say accounts for roughly 90% of Iran's crude exports, with someone making "generational insider trading wealth" off the volatility. • The mining fee debate and quantum FUD are dismissed as YouTube slop — the hosts point to the difficulty adjustment and growing node activity as evidence the network self-corrects. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/8a3fpIPEJvQ